Elegantly written, but disappointingly short on insights.
Born in America of Jewish and Indian parents, Delman ably evokes the cultural dissonance of a childhood divided among Ohio, Israel, and New York but has less success bringing her family to life in an often elliptical memoir.
Though the author heads each chapter with extracts from her Indian-born grandmother’s diaries and lards her account with details of Nana-Bai’s life, the older woman remains as shadowy a figure as Delman’s parents and siblings. What matters are the writer’s feelings; here, emotions are recollected in detail and mere facts like specific dates and places are scanted. Delman is the descendant of the Bene Israel, an ancient Jewish community shipwrecked during the pre-Christian era in India. There they prospered and continued to be observant, with some modifications. While still a child, the author learned that her grandmother was actually a second wife, polygamously married off to a sister’s husband and treated as an inferior even in death (the marriage is not mentioned on her tombstone). Nana-Bai lived in a hovel where her husband beat her on his visits. She immigrated to Israel with her daughter, who met and married Delman’s father, the descendant of Russian Jews. When they settled in New York, the author’s parents worked hard but were so poor they depended on handouts from their synagogue and no-frills groceries. As she describes the family’s various moves, her grandmother’s life, and the delicious Indian food they ate, Delman recalls how difficult it was for her to fit in: she wasn’t Indian enough for Indians, and Jews thought her too dark. After mild adolescent rebellion (rock music and necking) against her family’s strict rules, she gained more sense of self in college. Now troubled by her Indian relatives’ treatment of Nana-Bai, she finds it difficult to connect with them but understands the importance of family and community bonds.
Elegantly written, but disappointingly short on insights.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-44593-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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